PHENOMENOLOGY"The founder of phenomenology, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, introduced the term in his book, Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913; trans. 1931). Early followers of Husserl such as the German philosopher Max Scheler, influenced by his previous book, Logical Investigations (1900-1; trans. 1970), claimed that the task of phenomenology is to study essences, such as the essence of emotions. Although Husserl himself never gave up his early interest in essences, he later held that only the essences of certain special conscious structures are the proper object of phenomenology. "As formulated by Husserl after 1910, phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness that enable consciousness to refer to objects outside itself. This study requires reflection on the content of the mind to the exclusion of everything else. Husserl called this type of reflection the phenomenological reduction. Because the mind can be directed toward nonexistent as well as real objects, Husserl noted that phenomenological reflection does not presuppose that anything exists, but rather amounts to a "bracketing of existence," that is, setting aside the question of the real existence of the contemplated object. "What Husserl discovered when he contemplated the content of his mind were such acts as remembering, desiring, and perceiving and the abstract content of these acts, which Husserl called meanings. These meanings, he claimed, enabled an act to be directed toward an object under a certain aspect; and such directedness, called intentionality, he held to be the essence of consciousness. Transcendental phenomenology, according to Husserl, was the study of the basic components of the meanings that make intentionality possible."
Hubert L. Dreyfus, M.A., Ph.D.
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